The Jason Becker Kiesel signature guitar is another stunner this year. The JB24 is a new version of the “Numbers” guitar Becker designed but was never fully produced. “Because of the widespread acclaim of Carvin Guitars’ JB200C Jason Becker Tribute Guitar,” says the Kiesel website, “and our long relationship with Jason, creating a new and improved version of this well-known but seldom-seen guitar was a logical step for the Custom Shop.” JB24 features swamp ash body with tung oil finish, tung-oiled hard rock maple neck with maple 14” radius fingerboard, 2-way adjustable truss rod and dual carbon-fiber rods, premium Carvin Guitars locking tuners, and Seymour Duncan pickups: SH-2n in the neck position, STK-S7 in the middle, and Becker Signature Perpetual Burn in the bridge position.
With so much going on at various guitar booths, it was still impossible to overlook the major change introduced by Fender for 2017. Fender’s new American Professional series is replacing American Standard. Some of these guitars and basses are already in use by musicians such as Duff McKagan and Dhani Harrison. All instruments in the new series are handcrafted in the U.S. and include new Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision Bass and Jazz bass guitars, as well as new models — Tele Deluxe, Jaguar, and Jazzmaster. The launch includes 16 models and 92 SKUs in 11 colors. Prices range from $1,399.99 to $1,599.99.
Another surprise from Fender is a line-up of limited-edition Exotic Collection guitars in uncommon tonewoods sourced from unexpected places, such as, for example, the Buckstaff Furniture Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The series include Malaysian Blackwood Tele- caster 90; American Professional Pine Stratocaster, Jazzmaster, and Telecasters; and the American Professional Mahogany Tele Deluxe ShawBucker.
Over in the amplifier land, Laney Amplification made waves by announcing a Tony Iommi LA100BL amplifier, LA412 cab and a TI-Boost pedal. Both the amp and the pedal are recreations of Iommi’s original amp he used on the first Black Sabbath album. The amp is all hand wired point-to-point and has a hand-drilled turret board and an original box frame output transformer. The controls are gain one, gain two, treble, middle, bass and presence. The pedal features more functions than the original, with a drive and volume control, low and high frequencies, and a mid switch.
The Engl booth also saw plenty of star action with Marty Friedman presenting his signature amp head, the Inferno. It’s a 100W head with four EL34 valves and four ECC 83 pre-amp tubes, two channels (each with a gain boost switch and a bright switch) and a noise gate onboard. “The sound I got on the Inferno album was done with a combination of the Engl Special Edition, Powerball, Steve Morse Signature and the Invader amps,” says Friedman. “The Engl engineers analyzed what I was and wasn’t using from each of these amps to get those monster tones, and they created a ‘Frankenstein’ out of those amps customized to the types of tones I like to use.”
The Greg Howe signature amp was not the only attraction at the DV Mark booth this year. The Kiko Loureiro multiamp won approval by the Megadeth guitarist who praised its tone, dynamic response, effects, and 500W power. The amp offers a diverse range of soundscapes defecting Loureiro’s wide vocabulary of genres, sonic tones, and timbres.
Another success at this year’s NAMM was the new Sonzera series by PRS Guitars, which features Sonzera 50 Watt Combo, Sonzera 50 Watt Head and Sonzera 20 Watt Combo. Each model has a clean and lead channel with independent controls producing a wide range of tones from clean to overdrive. The 3D clean channel generates a variety of “chimey” tones, while the lead channel offers a bigger punch. The lead channel’s circuit allows to set it up like a boosted clean channel and tone controls can also be tweaked to make the channels sound like two different amplifiers. Says Chris Robertson of Blackstone Cherry: “I ended up recording the entire new Kentucky album with the amp.”
Far from being just a giant showcase for the newest music technology, NAMM also enables musicians, engineers, and producers to learn more about integrating it into their daily work. NAMM’s TEC Tracks Sessions provided full solid 4 days of 70 lectures, seminars, and demonstrations on sound technology, studio production, and live sound with the biggest industry names appearing as keynote speakers.
Legendary producer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin) held his Mix With The Masters session on January 20 from a professional mixing studio set up right on the main exhibition floor.
The prestigious NAMM TEC Awards which annually celebrates the best in professional audio and sound production, took place on January 21 honoring producer Jack Douglas with a Hall of Fame induction. Douglas was the producer behind the Aerosmith classic album Toys in the Attic. So it was only fitting that Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry performed on the night, together with his Aerosmith bandmate Brad Whitford, and his Hollywood Vampires bandmates Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp.
Opportunities to network and to keep up to date on all the latest industry developments were also provided during lectures and seminars at the NAMM Idea Center in the ground floor lobby. With topics ranging over subjects such as social media marketing, video storytelling, building a fan base on YouTube, and even hit songwriting strategies, these sessions proved to be an invaluable addition to the educational aspect of NAMM.
While during daytime NAMM attendees are busy working and learning, the organizers are making sure that evenings remain reserved for fun and great live music. On day one the Nissan NAMM Grand Plaza Stage hosted Richie Sambora and Orianthi, then on Friday night, the NAMM Foundation’s Celebration for Music Education welcomed former centerfielder for the New York Yankees and Turnaround Arts music education advocate, Bernie Williams, and his All-Star Band. And on Saturday, The NAMM Foundation and The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus presented Ronnie Spector and The Ronettes.
Always a hugely successful event, both for domestic and international participants, the NAMM show continues to be the unmissable one-stop meeting point for the popular music industry not only to do business, but to strike friendships, establish new contacts, and create networks between artists, technology innovators, journalists, educators, and retailers.
